Dreams before dying

Bucket-list wishes as varied as their makers

Seeing a walrus, driving a firetruck or teaching a child piano might not be on your bucket list. But that’s the charm of itemizing the things you want to do before you die: Everyone’s list is different. Here’s a sampling from Dispatch readers:

Seeing a walrus, driving a firetruck or teaching a child piano might not be on your bucket list.

But that’s the charm of itemizing the things you want to do before you die: Everyone’s list
is different.

Doug Preisse, chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party, had one notable item on his
bucket list: swim the Hellespont, a 3-mile journey across the Turkish strait — also known as the
Dardanelles — that separates Europe from Asia.

He did it in August — in an hour and 54 minutes — along with thousands of others
participating in the annual Hellespont swim.

Preisse was inspired both by a poem by Lord Byron, who completed the swim in 1810, and by
John Kulewicz, a member of the Franklin County Democratic Party Central Committee, who swam the
route in 2011.

“I thought, well, if the Democrats can do it, the Republicans have to, too,” said Preisse,
51.

Like Preisse, many other central Ohioans have stories behind the items on their bucket lists.